In its bid to secure Chinese funding for the massive French technology nuclear power station to be built at Hinkley Point, for which the government has agreed to guarantee electricity prices at nearly double the going rate, it seems that a wholly British advanced technology alternative is being ignored. This is the sort of casual contempt for the national interest that one associates with George Osborne and the fallen Cameron government, but for some reason the May government is unable to break free of its predecessor's perverse decision.
The Electron Model of Many Applications promises small, cheap and clean nuclear reactors that are never "critical" and therefore simply cannot runaway or meltdown if damaged. They just stop. They need only be fuelled with a ton of unenriched fuel at a time, whereas the behmoth being built in Somerset will contain hundreds of tons of expensively enriched fuel. It's like comparing the technology in the latest Star Trek movie with that of a 1930s Science Fiction B movie.
Read the article on the link and be amazed that you never even heard of this technology when Hinkley Point was being discussed.
This, by the way, is not the "Thorium Technology" being developed in India: that is just a Hinkley-like reactor that uses uranium 233 fuel bred from Thorium. The Indian technology isn't actually very advanced at all, it just offers a way round the enrichment of natural uranium. It saves a bit of money, but isn't a game changer as regards cleaness or safety. But when tackled on the issue of why "EMMA" is being ignored by the British government, Tory politicians will start talking about the Indian technology and muddle the issue as much as they can.
Britain urgently needs politicians capable of seeing the national interest when it is in front of their face.
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